Proxima Adventure

Chapter 24. Evolution.

Chapter 24. Evolution.

The voyage to the distant star system made everyone more relaxed. For some strange reason travelling faster than light has a placating effect on them.

The engineering staff lounged in Charles' living area to discuss things. His cat was curled up next to him.

"Is there a possibility that the system that keeps us young is something that Space Command discovered by accident and installed in this ship so the commander and his cronies could take advantage of it?" Dave asked.

"Probably," Charles replied. "I'm sure that they were aware of the rift and how it could end life on Earth."

"So, they decided to rescue themselves rather than trying to save humanity," Robert said.

"Does that sound so strange?" Charles proposed, his expression radiating disgust. "It's human nature to protect oneself at the expense of others."

"Especially when they brought along some amusement," Carl added.

"I think we can all agree that they were assholes," Charles said. "They forgot about what Robert Burns said about best laid plans of mice and men."

"So," Dave said. "We're essentially living out their plan to escape death at the expense of humanity."

"That pretty much sums it up. I don't know how this will turn out in the long run, but so far, we have a handle on a lot of it."

"Not to change the subject," Carl said. "But I went ahead and connected the defense shielding to the main command computer. I think there's more to it than we realize. It seems to be able to deflect just about anything."

"That's a good idea. We have no idea what we're going to run into on these trips to other star systems. I'll make sure that Alice knows about it."

The next day, Charles went to the command deck and found Alice there holding court so to speak. He sat down next to her. "We found that this ship has a defense shield, and it appears to be able to deflect most weapon systems. It's under 'Shield'. You can adjust its overall power level."

She entered the command to display the system's adjustment profiles. "Interesting," she reacted before turning to look at him. "Why can't we just leave it on all of the time?"

"It consumes a boat load of power. It would endanger the fusion power units."

She offered him a subtle grin. "Yeah, that makes sense."

"How long till we get there?"

"We should drop out of faster than light around eighteen hundred."

He stood up.

"Don't go. I feel lonely up here."

He sat down again. "Yeah, no one likes the pilot's lonely job."

"It's not that bad. I use the time to do math."

His eyebrows shot up. "You love math that much?"

"I love to solve tough problems. For example, I came up with this summation equation that has a log of the probability x. The problem is I'm not sure what the base of the logarithm should be."

"Try Euler's number."

"Why that one?"

"I don't know. It always seemed to work for me."

She tried it and after a few minutes turned to him. "Thanks."

He smiled. "Glad I could help."

She watched him walk to the elevator before turning back to her math problem, realizing that he was concealing his brilliance in science and math for some reason.